Do you cross your safety chains?
This has probably been discussed elsewhere but I couldn't find it through a search. When I bought my TT, the dealer's tech doing the walk through and hitch hook up told me you no longer have to cr...
Forum Discussion
Huntindog wrote:coolbreeze01 wrote:Those pics are "staged"
LarryJM gets it and has pictures to prove it. How could anyone not understand?
Amazing.........
If you pay attention you can see that someone is holding the chain ends in his hands. They can easily be put in ANY position he desires for the pic. In real life when actually hooked up to a TV, there will be little to no difference.
crossing those chains won't help a bad situation at all. It won't hurt anything to do it, but it ain't gonna save your bacon.
Yes I'm holding the chains, but just like on your TV I have them separated by an distance approximately the same as what would be on the TV. In practice the exact numbers aren't IMO that important since what is being shown is the concept and the benefits of crossing the chains even with a single attachment point and likewise downside consequences of not crossing them. If you're not able to understand what those pics clearly show then I doubt any pics would help you anyway.
I didn't document it or take pics, but at one time I tried my best to see how this cradle would work and hooked up my trailer to my Van with only the safety chains attached and then blocked the wheels on the trailer so they wouldn't move and then moved the Van forward enough to get a good tension on the chains and saw how that would actually "LIFT" the tongue off the ground. I didn't have any sort of tensionometers to see how much tension I had on the chains, but I was trying to simulate what would happen in a breakaway scenario with the trailer brakes fully engaged and what effect that would have on the safety chains. This was to prove at least to me that the often stated concern that just because of the natural slack in the chains they would allow the tongue to hit the ground and while this is true the effect of the tensioning due to the Trailer brakes being fully engaged is not accounted for in any of those comments.
Could I have done a better job of documentation, MAYBE, but anyone is free to post their findings with pics and then if they have a different take we can talk about it. However, IMO it's obviously eaiser to just verbally try and discount something than to try and actually prove it thru pics or experiments.
Larry
